Thursday, November 29, 2007

A Real Bay Area Metro

Eric over at Transbay Blog made some comments in the Livermore Thread that rang true for many people in San Francisco and other big cities with half finished metro lines. I too wish we had a real metro system in the Bay Area. It certainly would make getting more places much easier. And I have a feeling that it would increase ridership dramatically.

Why do I think we should invest more in urban subway systems? Because these lines have been driving national ridership gains over the last 15 years. (data here). Heavy Rail has produced about the same gain as bus, light rail, and commuter rail combined. Obviously there are different modes for different purposes. But some corridors need a metro, more than BART has now. Perhaps we should start a campaign? The Urban Subway Expansion Project. Any other cities that should join? I nominate LA first.

So where should we put new subways? In the Bay Area.... we'll just make a map. Any corridors? I'll start with Geary haha.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Transit Effectiveness Project

I went to a meeting tonight where there was a presentation on the transit effectiveness project in San Francisco. I wish I would have had my thumb drive as there were some fascinating maps with great data. I found them but they aren't high quality. Here is the link to the Geary data showing where people get on and off the bus. If only all transit agencies went and got this type of information, we would know a lot more about operations. The following maps are located in this presentation. All the screen shots below are courtesy of Muni.

Operating Speed: This shows where Muni is really slowed down by traffic. No Surprise that Van Ness and Stockton are some of the worst. I wish we would have had this data before the 3rd Street LRT project was started. Take a look at that street. Green. This is why data is important. It makes political decisions much easier. Now thats not to say that it won't get more congested as the are grows around light rail and it needed to become rail at some point, but there are many pressing needs in the city, mainly Van Ness and the long orange Geary.

Operating Speed

Boardings: This shows where people board the buses. The most effective transit is on the main corridors and major traffic generators. It's interesting to note that where there is a high capacity spine, there are a lot of boardings. Most noticeable is along Mission BART. It shows how system boardings would probably improve if BART was expanded to Geary then down 19th such as proposed by SF Cityscape. It would improve boardings on the bus lines connecting to the stations.

Boardings

Trips: The above observation is proven below in that there is a missing link between the Sunset and Richmond districts. The red dots are total trips between districts. Since there are a lot of trips North from the Richmond South towards SF State it would make a lot of sense to have rapid transit fed by east west buses.

Travel Patterns


Data. It's an amazing thing. According to one AC Transit board member at tonight's TALC meeting, they will be doing this soon as well which should bring some even more interesting results.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

New Blogs for the Roll

Just thought I would share a few new blogs with folks. Give them a click.

Jacksonville Transit - Transit News from Jacksonville Florida.

Light Rail AZ - Discussing Phoenix Light Rail Issues.

Light Rail in Grand Rapids - A Discussion of Grand Rapids Transit Progress.

Street Heat - LA Transportation News.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Austin News and Flashback

Update: Krusee is going to Retire and will most likely be Toll Road Czar. He should not be on the CAMPO committee now.

I'm just going to link to some stuff...

M1ek talks about the good and bad of CAMPO taking rail planning away from Cap Metro. Discussions about Mike Krusee (A bit of a shady character), should not be had without also noting that Lee Walker is back for 2 more years. Some locals believe he was a major part of the 2000 election loss because of some pre-election decisions to not do more outreach and the fact that he and others gave in to demands from Republicans in the state house on Commuter and Light Rail.

Here's a fun flashback from my Master's PR/Thesis.

In the 1999 legislative session, Mike Krusee, a State Representative from Round Rock, authored new legislation that would let Capital Metro keep half of its cent sales tax and let voters decide what to do with the other half. The bill died in committee due to Capital Metro’s urging because the transit authority convinced lawmakers that they would have an election in 2000 and that the voters should be able to decide the fate of rail before another raid on Capital Metro’s sales tax revenue.
...

As 2000 loomed as the year for the final decision, the Capital Metro board was grappling with whether to hold the election in May or November. The main concern was getting federal funding and giving the community enough time to understand the details of the light rail plan. There were even attempts to satiate the road warriors that included Gerald Daugherty’s ROAD group. Mayor Kirk Watson floated an idea of putting road bonds on the ballot along with the rail election but it was criticized once again by Daugherty as insufficient. Daugherty still wanted money from Capital Metro for road building.
...

In 2003, another interesting development occurred in rail planning. State Representative Krusee, the new chairman of the Texas House of Representatives Transportation Committee was quoted at a private transportation meeting as saying that he would like to see a commuter rail system in Central Texas. Preferably, the lines would be located on existing Capital Metro right of way as well as the Union Pacific right of way located between San Marcos and his constituency in Round Rock. Representative Krusee proposed a starter red line replacing the 1998 consultant’s green line light rail in 2000. Consultants in 1998 believed that the green line was a better route for ridership production however it was turned down by the voters in 2000. It seemed that commuter rail was on Senator Krusee’s mind even before the 2000 election. In a 2000 Austin American Statesman article, he was quoted, “I wish they would be more open-minded to alternatives to light rail”.
In more news, the Statesman claims Capital Metro needs to be clearer in its book keeping after an article by Ben Wear about costs of the new commuter rail line. It's just another attack, but they better get used to it as it's gonna keep on coming with this line.

Jim Skaggs, Gerald Daugherty's best buddy, also penned an already debunked article also. I'll bring you a few of the debunkings soon but this gets so tiring. When can advocates go on the offensive already?

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Livermore BART Extension

Driving home from Bakersfield today I was thinking about possible extensions to BART as I passed through Livermore. While I'm not sure expanding BART as a technology is a very smart idea because of expense, there are a few configurations where it might make sense. But might not. If you take a look at Pleasanton today, you'll notice that on the North side of Highway 580, there are some new very dense developments that might be well served by a good transit connection. You won't be able to see them on the aerial photo, but they are in the orange box below.

Planning for this extension has been on BART's mind for but studied seriously since at least 2003. The study initially looks at just going down the I-580 Median. Boooorrrrinnnggg and cheap. From the BART study done by Nelson Nygaard below...


The study also looks at connections to Walnut Creek, but we're going to focus on the Pleasanton area extension. Also, BART is building an infill station at Dublin. It's represented below as a black and white dot. The blue line is the Dublin/Pleasanton BART line which goes to SFO. The green line is the ACE commuter rail that goes to the Central Valley. This was also the route for the Altamont high speed rail alignment I believe.

But here are possible alignments. The yellow line is my favorite. It goes through the dense neighborhood being created to the north (orange box) and moves along vacant land that could be zoned for dense office and residential. It also passes the Livermore Airport, downtown livermore and gets right next to the Livermore National Labs facility which the north side of the station area could provide park and ride facilities for those driving over the Altamont who didn't use the ACE Train.

The red line uses the freeway until it gets to a crossover point. The cross over point allows the transit to move onto the ACE ROW and stop at stations up there. It along with the freeway median all the way out to Livermore plan are the cheap ways out. They might be cost effective but they do not provide opportunity for livable neighborhoods around the stations, since there is are 4 lanes of the freeway running on each side of the train. This will make the stations fairly auto/park n ride oriented. Also, if

Any thoughts? (The right side is cut off. Click on the picture to get a full view)

PleasantonExt

Charlotte Light Rail Open for Business

On Saturday Charlotte opened its first light rail line to huge fanfare. 60,000 people rode the train on Saturday, 34,000 of them in a 4 hour period. The local paper had this to say:

That puts our region in a select group of metropolitan areas by welcoming a critical new resource that expands local transportation options. It's a far-sighted step, one that positions this community for an increasingly urban future.
It's amazing that some cities get it, and people in other cities still don't.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Bakersfield California

Every time I visit my sister's house for Thanksgiving I'm mortified by the autocentricity of the City of Bakersfield. Every time I come back there are more former agricultural fields turned into sprawl and more awful auto oriented commercial strip centers. I wish I could say that there could be transit here but there is no hope for this community it seems. There is a bus system but everyone has a car and the roads are huge. New roads are constructed to be 6 lanes at some point in their lifespan even though at the moment they only carry 2 lanes. It's gross actually. Every road is a speedway basically and the sidewalks that are built are devoid of pedestrians.

There isn't a building higher than 3 stories anywhere except for perhaps one or two and those are surrounded by huge parking lots. Elevators are an obvious rarity. I'm not sure what good having high speed rail down here would be. I know that it would be good for transportation but wouldn't it just be aiding all this crap that gets built down here? I'm sure though that in a few years when water runs short and there get to be too many people, things will change, but will it catastrophic or a slow bleed? I guess we'll have to wait and see. In the mean time, I'll be here at Christmas and Thanksgiving, traveling by car, and stuck on I-5 during if there is a wreck.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Denial Isn't Just a River in Africa

They lost by 70% of the vote, yet they still have a bit of internal transit conflict. Council members in Huntersville had this to say about the commuter rail line. From the Charlotte Observer:

Jeter and Lucas said they're willing to discuss options with CATS because they're not against the train, just the funding plan.

Swain said those on her board opposed to TIF financing are "wrestling with their ideological philosophies and the mandate of the people."

Two weeks ago voters approved keeping a Mecklenburg County half-cent sales tax that funds transit projects, such as the train.

Jeter said the 70 percent support of voters for maintaining the tax wasn't a "mandate from the Huntersville residents that they want commuter rail in Huntersville."

He said the train is part of the town's future transportation solution, but that roads should come first. The town doesn't spend any of its money on road building, but it should, he said.


How soon is the future? Most have said its now. The transit opponents all said "This is a referendum on the trains". How quickly things change. My feeling is that, if they don't want it, start on the downtown streetcar. The black community in Charlotte who rallied for the transit tax and were promised a sped up streetcar construction timeline will be more willing to build now than these folks.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Second Avenue Gets FFGA from FTA

They've been waiting a while for this $1.3 Billion cash infusion from the FTA. Seems as though they might finally get what they've been seeking all these years. Check out Second Avenue Sagas, a great blog about New York Transit in general and their discussion about this.